As explained earlier, Arnold was started as necessity as I was anticipating a lawsuit to challenge a non-compete clause in my independent contractor agreement.  I was approached by a patient in Kearney and asked if I would consider starting a satellite office in Arnold.  Initially I thought she was crazy, we first started to explore the option when I decided to leave my position at that time.

Kristina and I drove to Arnold, population 597, on a Friday afternoon in March of 2013, to meet with the Economic Development office in Arnold.  Which turns out to be an invaluable resource while trying to get things going.  While she was showing us around the town, we stopped in to the beauty shop which was being renovated at the time.  I had a brief conversation about possibly renting a room in the shop one day a week, and so it began.

At that point we were starting to get things lined up in Kearney and decided to take the plunge and go to Arnold on Wednesday’s.  I ran a few ads in the local paper and took a leap of faith.  From talking to people of Arnold, it sounded as if they had a bad experience with the last chiropractor that has been in town prior to me, so I think they were fairly hesitant to come in initially.  At one point, I had a conversation with the hardware store, they indicated that I could borrow a sign to put out front of the shop in hopes of drawing in more people.

Turns out a bright green or orange sign that sits out front along Highway 92 can be priceless.  I would have people stopping in after 4-6 months indicating that they didn’t know I was even in town, front page of the local paper sometimes does not register with some people.  The word started to get out and things started to grow rapidly from that point.

Two years into the Arnold experiment, Kristina and I started to talk that if we were going to continue to go the small community on the Custer and Logan county line that I needed to be able to offer the same services to them as I did to the people of Kearney.  The first two years, I was basically only able to offer adjustments and manual therapy as I was working off a portable table that I would take with me when I left every week. 

That’s when we stated to explore the option of potentially purchasing a building in Arnold.  As you may or may not know, your options when buying real estate in a small town can be limited.  We came to terms on the one building that was available, main street Arnold it was.  Now the building is not perfect by a long shot but we make due.  After painting, a little construction we were off and running.  I have said since we bought the building that we essentially bought a garage with a building attached to it. 

I was now able to offer therapies, such as electric stim, ultrasound, manual therapy and of course adjusting.  I moved a table from the Kearney office, the best part of this is that I didn’t have to break things down every time I left town, I could just shut the lights off and leave everything. 

We soon found out that the window air conditioners don’t keep a hundred year old building cool when it’s a hundred degrees outside.  That’s when updated air handlers were installed and made a world of difference.  Being comfortable yourself and have patients that are comfortable when they walk in the building is a hug part of getting results.

The hardest part of Arnold is the drive, it’s kind of a haul for me from Kearney, but as soon as the patients start coming in for the day that all goes out the window.  80 miles is only long when you don’t have someone to talk to, thankfully Kristina travels with me most weeks now.

When the Minden opportunity came about, the Arnold office was a big concern for us.  While Minden is only 20 minutes away and would be much more convenient, the people of Arnold have been with me from my start.  I have developed some very good relationships in Arnold.  Kristina and I figured we couldn’t just give it up, so we moved the working day in Arnold to Saturday mornings in order to accommodate as many patients as I could. 

Quick side note: I have two “secretaries”, in Minden, I call them “secretaries” but they are more motherly figures to me as they have been working in a chiropractic office almost as long as I have been alive.  They thought I was crazy when I told them that I go to Arnold to see patients, so they laughed at me a little.  The girls don’t laugh at me any more when I bring the list of patients back to the office on Monday’s as they see how busy the days can actually get.

Numerous people told me that nobody will come see you in Arnold on a Saturday morning because there are too many things going on and that the town clears out.  As is turns out, the people of Arnold have been nothing but remarkable.  I have actually become busier on Saturday’s then I was on Wednesday’s for the first three years.  I have upgraded equipment numerous times in Arnold in order to offer the best service that I can and I believe that it has paid off many times over.

It may have been a grind, but sticking with the community has been one of the best decisions I have made.  Moral of the story, stick with people and build confidence that you are going to be there for them and with them.  Whether it be a snow storm or heat wave, I think I have missed two days in four years in Arnold and I truly believe that just showing up has paid dividends.

A satellite office may not be for everyone but if you want to expand your reach far beyond a single town radius, this allows you to expand into those areas.  I could not be more pleased and look forward to continuing my journey to the base of the sandhills for the foreseeable future.

I practice with the mantra, take care of your patients and your patients will take care of you.  I refuse to have a practice management company tell me how to treat patients that walk in the door.  If you are looking for a chiropractor that sets you up on a set treatment plan that lasts a couple months, you are looking at the wrong guy.  I attend state convention twice a year and I genuinely feel like the odd man out sometimes when I indicate that I treat a patient for three times and release them.  This tends to be a no-no in the eyes of other chiropractors. I pride myself on treating patients how I would want to be treated if I were to walk into the office.

I’m a very open person, if you ask me a question, I will answer you very openly and honestly and like building a long standing relationship with the individual patient.  I have zero desire to treat 50-60 patients per day as I feel that you lose the personal interaction with patients and this is one of my favorite parts of my job. I pride myself on trying to be as open as I can with treatment and treatment options that are available for patients.  If I can help, by all means I am willing to help but if chiropractic care is not right for a person, I will be the first person to indicate that you may need to seek alternative care.

When starting into practice, I spent a lot of money on advertising and digital marketing through the local cable company with targeting.  You want to know how many long standing patients I got from that…..1 and he might be the nicest old man in town but he comes in about 6-7 times a year but the advertising definitely did not return what I spent on it.  As a young chiropractor, you will find out that no matter how many screenings or talks that you provide, your best patients will come from word of mouth referral.  Treat everyone that walks in the door with the best care that you can provide and they will turn into your best advocate.

Patients will come and go, it is really a tough concept to grasp, but there are so many chiropractors that some will remain very loyal to you and some will hop around.  Treat them all the same and kill everyone with kindness.  Have a smile on your face and keep an upbeat attitude towards the day.  Trust me, you will have good days and bad days and your finances may look fairly bleak but stick to your guns and things will work out. 

You don’t need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month to a company to tell you how to run YOUR business.  If you feel that this is the best option for you, go for it, but just know you are perfectly capable to doing it without them.  It can be very frustrating working in the same vicinity as chiropractors that use management companies, as the giveaways and gimmicks can be irritating to explain to patients but I plan on sticking to my plan, as I feel every other chiropractor should.

We are now five years into practice, taking care of patients, building relationships and trying to be an overall decent person in hopes that in combination a practice and a following will flourish. I will try to elaborate on this concept throughout the posts, but if you have any specific questions feel free to contact me.

There are not a lot of people out there that cannot relate to having between 150K-200K in student loan debt while trying to go out and start a practice, while not being completely sure of your skills.  In my experience, I ended up working as an independent contractor at a successful clinic.  When you start into practice, you think you are going to go out and change the world, little do you know that it is not that easy. 

The “business class” that you take in school tells you to go out and join your local chamber of commerce, be involved and get out and be seen in the community.  They don’t tell you that just because you are visible doesn’t mean those people become patients.  About a three months into practice you realize that this is not going to be as easy as they portrayed in school.  I thought I was doing all of the right things, treating the few patients that I had with care and getting them as well as I could. 

After a few months of working, I started to realize that the harder I worked the more money the owner of the clinic would make.  As you will figure out throughout this blog, I am very much a numbers person.  I started to crunch the numbers because I was not happy with the situation that I was in and my wife would be the first person to tell you that.  I had conversations with the clinic owner in hopes of changing the percentage, it was eventually changed to a more favorable rate but ultimately did not work out.

The clinic that I was working in was moving towards more internal medicine and supplements.  Come to find out this is not how I wanted to practice and after about six months, I started to think about leaving.  I had done the math about how many patients I was going to need to see to make it work on my own.  The main hang up in the equation was that I had a non-compete clause in the contract that I signed.  This is what sparked my interest in setting up a clinic that was outside of the radius so that I would have some income just in case I was to get sued for a breach of contract.  This is where the Arnold clinic comes into the picture, but I will get into that at a later post.

I spoke to attorneys and was assured that the likelihood of me losing a lawsuit for a non-compete clause would be rare, but that I would need to have the money available to fight the suit just in case it came along.  My wife and I started scouting potential sites (I refer to a lot of the decisions that I have made in my career as “we” because Kristina has been by my side from the beginning and has been very supportive of decisions that have been made).  We found a location in downtown Kearney and was told that I better have everything lined up and ready to go when I handed in my notice.  Normally with independent contractors, when you hand in a notice that you are leaving, the clinic makes you leave that same day and not to return, but this was not the case.  I worked the final month of my contract, but was not able to bring patients with me when I decided to leave.

The one thing that I had going for me at the time in 2013 was that I had saved enough money that I did not need to take out a business loan to start my practice.  I started with very basic equipment and a simple exam table, I am certified to perform DOT/CDL Physicals and needed this type of table in order to accomplish what I needed to get done.

As it turns out, I never ended up having to fight a lawsuit for a breach of contract, opened up a satellite office in Arnold and have had a successful practice in Kearney since the beginning.  If I would not have left when I did, Kristina and I have determined that I would have left the chiropractic profession as I was not happy with the job that I had and with the profession in general.  While I took a decrease in income after the first year, my sanity and happiness was much better.  The learning lesson in this: do what makes you happy and run with it.  Now I know that sounds cliché, but I am now a true believer in this thinking, your happiness and satisfaction with your job translates into how you are portrayed to the community and your patients which is highly beneficial when building a practice.

If there are any questions, please feel free to contract me and I will be glad to give more insight.